| In defence of the ‘Natural
Attitude’: charting a return from the madness of interpretation.
Abstract The phenomenologist Edmund Husserl described our awareness of the world as displaying a ‘natural attitude’. When walking, for instance, we display this natural attitude in as much as we unthinkingly expect a floor to bear our weight; and most of the time we are not wrong about this. The natural attitude is marked then by the absence of interpretation, and as assemblage readers will appreciate, interpretation is a leading concept for later-day post-processual theorising. But what is the basis of this natural attitude towards our world? The broadly phenomenological answer given to this question provides the backdrop against which we can see the problems with post-processualism’s use of ‘interpretation’. What we find is a somewhat deranged discourse on representations; a discourse moreover who's characteristic trope is that of hyperbole. Keywords: interpretation, phenomenology, affordance, natural attitude, mundane studies. Prolegomenon Reading Descartes over Derrida’s shoulder I come across the following thought provoking passage: Now, I find myself wondering: Introduction In this paper I endeavour to show that post-processual / interpretative theorising about the closely related topics of texts, reading, interpretation, hermeneutics and embodiment, displays a certain hyperbolic derangement or disorderliness that stultifies the whole project. Jacquetta Hawkes’ (1968) discussion of the then burgeoning scientism in archaeology provides us with a useful image here. Recalling small mid-west towns in the US, we find ‘Lofty, painted frontages impress[ing] the citizens on the high street; lowly shacks at the back contain the goods and services’ (Hawkes 1968: 257). Or alternatively, Mortimer Wheeler’s comment to Stuart Piggott, ‘You and I know perfectly well that it doesn’t matter what goes into the middle of a plan - that’s controlled by the survey - but what you put round the edge’ (Piggott 1965: 176, original emphasis). In part one, I begin by looking at the clear confusion between linguistic signification (relating to semantics), and sociological signification or semiotics. In part two I trace a connection between this confusion of signs and the subsequent development that came to focus on embodiment as the ground of interpretation; embodiment is taken up further in part three of the paper. In part four I introduce and say a little bit about mundane studies which treats of the unmarked aspects of human life wherein dwells the natural attitude. Part 1: Getting Outside the Text Derrida’s (1997) commentary on Descartes draws our attention to his rhetorical use of hyperbole, a practice Derrida knows well, for it was Derrida who gave us the hyperbolic aphorism that there is nothing outside of the text. Stanley Rosen responded to Derrida with the observation that: Chaos indeed, for archaeologists confirmed Rosen’s prognosis and so crucial distinctions were steadily effaced. The first distinction to go - courtesy of Barthes - was that between the linguistic and the sociological signifier, for according to Rathje and Schiffer (1982) artefacts are like a jumble of letters. But of course letters of the alphabet are combined in order to make words and statements, whereas an artefact like an ‘old school tie’ already states the case that its wearer is of the ‘old school’. Comprehension of the sociological signifier poses the problem of recognition - with whom or what am I dealing. While the linguistic signifier poses the problem of identification - is there a signifying difference. The ‘old school tie’ (an artefact that appears alongside others) involves the sociology of clothes, not the letter like differences between plain ties, flowery ties, and striped ties. The clear confusion between linguistic and sociological signification was intensified by Hodder (1989) who argued that to understand a text is to follow its movement from sense to reference. That is, from what it says to what it talks about. According to Hodder (after Ricoeur), a material action can be equated with a speech-act, and like a speech-act, it has propositional content. Unfortunately for Hodder’s Ricoeurian analysis, Wittgenstein has shown that a proposition has no referent: a proposition describes a state of affairs, it is not the sign or name of a state of affairs (cf. Wittgenstein 1988: §3.144). Take the following general proposition, "an archaeologist went out on site". The term ‘archaeologist’ could be used to refer to Ian Hodder, Rosemary Cramp or any other notable denizen of archaeology. But what about the predicate ‘went out on site’ (who, when, where)? If we take a proposition to be the name or sign of a referent, we would say that it is true when something in the world corresponds to it. For instance, the highly influential philosopher, Gottlob Frege, took all true propositions as the name of a single object, the Truth. But as we have seen, Wittgenstein (1988) explicitly ruled out reference for propositions, remarking that in the written form, a proposition does not appear essentially different from a word. Hence Frege was lead to call a proposition a compounded name (cf. ibid.:§3.143) However, for both Frege and Wittgenstein, it is the business of the proposition to advance a true or false thought, but then the false proposition is one whose ‘referent’ is non-existent. Propositions describe states of affairs, but there are many different ways of describing. To see all descriptions as propositional in form is to get confused between the surface and depth grammar of ‘describe’. That is, the immediately evident features of words or actions (e.g., they are syntactically the same) at the expense of the overall use they are put to (see Glock 1996, for further discussion). Hodder’s (1989) own example was that of the making of a pot. Now the making of a pot is not something other than the making of a pot, say a list of instructions describing a successive state of affairs that pertain in the making of a pot. Rather it just is the making of a pot. However, if in making a pot, one aims at teaching the making of pots, then the making of a pot can function as a part or the whole of a description of making a pot. In this educative circumstance, the making of a pot stands as a description or representation of pot manufacture, but that does not make it propositional in form. Context, as I am sure Hodder will agree, is everything, but words and sentences are context free in order that we can individually project through them what we find it worthwhile communicating. The simple fact of making a pot does not aim at communicating anything, it stands as is its own context, and means nothing beyond itself. To confuse the making of a pot, with the making of a pot to describe the making of a pot, is to get confused about surface and depth grammar. It is to fail to see the extent and different nature of other uses that the making of a pot is put to. All in all, this was not a promising start for the post-processual project for there was a consistent failure to get past superficialities, and all the while leaving the symbolic nature of material culture unresolved (cf. Thomas 1998). Part 2: Reading and Hermeneutics Semiotics studies inarticulate signs whereas semantics deal with articulate words and statements. A bunch of roses signify semiotically - if I send them - my inarticulate passion, the attached note meanwhile, articulates the thought "I love you". Either semiotically or semantically taken, the supposed anthropomorphic rock carvings investigated by Yates (1993) are signifiers, though we don’t know what they signify, or how, or for whom, or exactly when. These Swedish rock carvings are therefore quite unlike the anthropomorphic signs directed at us that signify semiotically (inarticulately or mutely) that on this very spot are the gents and ladies toilet. Again the distinction between surface and depth grammar applies, for such contemporary signs, as opposed to the rock carvings, are readable precisely because they are addressed to us within all sorts of different circumstances, and so they are part of our mundane existence, and it is their place in our mundane existence that shows us their depth grammar. Equally readable, though in a different way, and hence involving a different depth grammar (they have a different place in our mundane existence), is the following statement: ‘an archaeologist went out on site’. In this semantic case, we read a general proposition, and while perfectly understandable / readable, as being about an archaeologist etc., it is nevertheless meaningless for it is not yet addressed to anyone. Nor, moreover, does it raise the issue of hermeneutics, that is, what does it mean precisely for me? Originally, the term hermeneutics (as Heidegger (1996) pointed out in Being and Time) referred to messages from the Gods informing us about our destiny. Hence the home of hermeneutics strictu sensu is the temple, but in the profane world outside we are under no obligation whatsoever (as we are within the temple) to interpret texts which say nothing to us. In the profane world, the escape of meaning is not the problem facing Descartes; he understood, but was he being deceived by an evil genius? Rather, I thought I understood but really, there is nothing there to understand. So is there any meaning left in the Swedish rock carvings for Yates or anyone today? First of all, if they are treated semiotically as signifiers, as ‘standing-in-for-signifieds’ (e.g., roses for my passion), then the answer is no; particularly given the semiotic doctrine of the arbitrariness of the sign, for that leaves us with no motivated criteria for associating one thing with another. What about taking the rock carvings semantically, i.e., as signifying a pure difference? In order to demonstrate a semantic relation it is necessary that one can now go on, and the trajectory of that going on is to all intents and purposes obligatory. For instance, ‘2+3 =’ obligates a reading that prompts the placing of a ‘5’ after the ‘=’. As Wittgenstein (1988a) put the matter, ‘This is how it strikes me. When I obey a rule, I do not chose, I obey the rule blindly’(§219); ‘obeying a rule is a practice’ (§202); ‘What this shows is that there is a way of grasping a rule that is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call obeying the rule, and going against it in actual cases’ (§201, original emphasis throughout). The presence of a semantics - which involves the normative distinction between correct and incorrect usage or response - places us in this kind of obligatory relation to signs and clearly this is not the case for us with the Swedish rock cravings. That some of the rock carvings are taken as anthropomorphic - prompting Yates’ (1993)Archaeology of the Body - is entirely to do with our traditions of representational practices and the language-games in which they find their home. The rock carvings that Yates (and those who preceded him) take as anthropomorphic, show that there has occurred in our culture an agreement in judgements regarding the use of descriptions for such pictures; hence ‘interpretation’ is already a culturally accomplished fact. Again as Wittgenstein put it, ‘A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside of it for it lay in our language, and language seems to repeat it back to us inexorably’ (Wittgenstein 1988a: §115). Not being the addressee of the Swedish rock carvings, Yates (1993) has no serious motivation or hope in imposing his account of sexual identity formation onto the carvings in the way that he wishes to do (I’ve no great problem with Yates' (ibid.) account of sexual identity formation). And so what banally passes in interpretative archaeology for hermeneutics or interpretation is simply the processual procedures of hypothesis, inference and calculation. The distinction between a linguistic signifier and a sociological signifier is subtle and fluid (e.g., MacDonald’s big ‘M’ is a case in point). But neither mode of signification will hold firm for one not enmeshed in a culturally relevant semantics. For such a semantics is co-extensive with a pattern of living - the unnoticed in the background of our lives - in which any agreement in judgements about a difference can be made to signify. This is the truth in de Saussure’s (1959) linguistic structuralism; but the difference must take its place in the conduct of our lives and this shows the falsity in de Saussure, for langue (language as a system of differences) is a barren abstraction without parole (social action, speech). To necessarily stand in an as yet indeterminate relation to a distant pattern of living, a pattern of living in which the Swedish rock carvings were readable, and yet claim to be able to read them, is at best simply feigning to have understood them. At worst such interpretations so called are tendencious, bordering on the utterly fanciful. And of course, if one cannot actually read the signs, then no hermeneutic will be forthcoming either. Part 3: Being in Place Interpretation, so called, has also been linked with embodiment as well as the reading of texts, so called. What this amounts to is well illustrated by the following passage: Implicated in this passage from Moore (1986) is that the world, or rather, its appearance, is a text to be decoded. But to be reading at all is to be enmeshed within a semantics and thus also subject to a grammar; with naturally occurring body movement the grammar is physically established (see below) and hence given; no interpretation is at issue, thus the natural attitude. But do we actually receive signs from the world at all? I would say 'no' to this question for the simple reason that the world does not send us messages. We perceive the world directly through the sense organs (the whole body really), though not as images to be decoded, but in the form of a spatially and temporarily distributed fields of energy (light, sound, chemical) that when directly encountered, generates a nested field of co-variant responses within us (see Richardson and Webster 1996 for further discussion). So, regarding the visual system, Mackay comments that vision is not about images but rather the capture of optical covariation (invariant ratios of illumination) that ‘take[s] advantage of the informational redundancy that the covariation represents’ (Mackay 1986: 372). And more generally Chiel and Beer note that: For a while now cognitive science orthodoxy has held that cognition is grounded in mental symbols / representations of the world and that mental functioning consists in computational manipulations over such representations. What the Chiel and Beer quote represents is how far at least some in the main-stream of cognitive science have travelled away from orthodoxy, and towards the ecological view of perception and cognition developed by James J. Gibson and his students (of which I am one). Of central concern here is that the dynamic mediating role that Chiel and Beer assign to the nervous system precludes any orthodoxly understood computational account and so to the need for representations (but see Kazic 1999). If perception relies on the pickup of ecological information (as a field of covariation) as Gibson (1986) argued, there is no role for inference, or it could be said here, interpretation. What the ecological account of perception and cognition argues is that an organism as epistemic agent and its environment as the support for its acts, are bound together as a synergistic system by lawful relations between them. And of course with a lawful relation, an ‘interpretation’ is given and hence the natural attitude prevails. Julian Thomas (1993), having quoted Moore (1986), goes on to state that movement through time-space (sic) is not merely (merely!) an ergonomic and synchronizing process, but rather a ‘constant process of interpretation of space, its meaning and one’s place within it’ (Thomas 1993: 79). Elsewhere Bender, et. al.state that ‘Places and pathways...and all the places in between, help to shape [the] world of ritual’ (1997: 148-9) And again, David and Wilson note that ‘Place and people are meaningfully reconstituted....through a dialectical internalization of one’s surrounds and an externalization of one’s self, which together constitutes Being’ (1999: 163). Thomas' claim for a constant interpretation of space is simply incoherent, as is the ‘meaning of space’, but what is this place that keeps being alluded to? Chapman (1997) informs us that according to Tuan (e.g. 1973) spaces are transformed into places through the acquisition of definition and meaning. There seems once more to be a derangement between surface and depth grammar here. Tuan (ibid.) seems to be using place to refer in part to what in physiological terms is termed kinesthesis (feeling one’s own movements) together with its psychological correlate of self-consciousness (subjectivity). This can be related directly to Husserl’s phenomenology, for as Tito notes, ‘fact and eidos [the look] are one in the living body, and it is the living body that is the transcendental ego’ (1990: 90). Gadamer gives the following elucidation of this transcendental ego / body: Thus the objective pole or environment is that within which the subjective pole or agent forms, and in so doing, becomes itself a part of the objective world to which subjectivity must once more form itself within. In Gibsonian terms subjectivity is formed through modes of kinesthesis (visual, haptic/touch etc.) which have both an objective and subjective aspect. As Gibson put it, ‘the flow of the ambient array...contains information with a subjective reference as well as information with objective reference’ (Gibson 1968: 200). And it is through the pickup of ecological information from an ambient array (of light or sound) that we are afforded action in the world. What we perceive is the affordances of the world for us. As Gibson (1986) explained, the affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. What is afforded are occasions to act in all manner of ways (banally put, sitting on, walking across, speaking to, and so on) based on capacities to act given a specific form of embodiment, relative to an immediately present physical and or social environment. Thus for Gibson, an animal is by and large co-extensive with its perceptual systems, and so what its immediate environment can offer an animal by way of acting is a joint product of a specific embodiment and the structure of the environment given that specific embodiment (see Webster 1999, for further discussion). It is through the relation of affordance that subjectivities are generated out of an objective situation that pertains for one. One’s place then is given first by an immanent field of affordance - a geography of action - as a non-interpreted depth grammar (and ‘Grammar tells us what kind of object a thing is’ Wittgenstein 1988a: §373). Whereas pathways (Bender et al 1997) megalithic architecture (Thomas 1993) and sacred mountain (David and Wilson 1999) as phenomena offering a field of action are a surface or virtual grammar when not engaged in an immanent way, otherwise, they are engaged with only through extensive and highly diverse mediations (e.g., in talking about them). And as a surface grammar, they have only a very loose connection to the constitution and reconstitution of subjectivity. It is this confusion between surface and depth grammar that leads to the offending derangement where the hyperbole of lofty frontages invariably come to reign supreme. Recalling Hawkes’ (1968) image of American mid-west towns, first come the ‘lofty frontage’, then come the ‘goods and services’: The example above shows the typical feigning with regard to understanding the human-world interrelation, feigning is shown in the shear exaggeration of an exposition of landscape as not being out there; not ever? As the subsequent discussions show, the landscape or hut circles or sacred mountain, are never anything else but out there for the archaeologists since they must be surveyed, measured and hypothesised about in archaeological terms. For the Aboriginal peoples of David and Wilson’s (1999) study, the mountain is quite definitely out there - for that is where they say that evil spirits dwell. For the Leskernick peoples, the huts (hut circles) were likewise out there, to be used only according to the season. In other words, the very explanations latterly developed effectively deflate the previously made hyperbolic pronouncements. Part 4: Mundane Studies What the analysis of post-processual / interpretative archaeological theorising given above has tried to show, is that (a) post-processual archaeology is still actually contained within the horizon of processualism while only feigning to be a more critical approach to the past; (b) has an exaggerated and ill examined sense of the worth and utility of non-archaeologically indigenous theorising; and (c) that post-processualists seem fatally attracted to what they clearly think are remarkable and profound pronouncements. Here is my all-time favourite, ‘it is not possible to divorce doing from thinking’ (Bender et al 1997: 148). However, the evidence shows that they are unable to cash these statements in for worthwhile goods, hence leaving themselves open to the charge of being undischarged bankrupts. If post-processual archaeology is to find its way back from these derangements and the fanciful ‘interpretations’ that they tend to spawn then a new start is required. One way back is to start to think about how we might chart out what is in fact beneath and thus the ground of any motivated interpretations of the past human life. In other words, look and see, so far as we can contrive, at the unmarked mundane weave of human living as it has unfolded these past 50,000 years or so. This will not be an easy or individually accomplished task and I do not pretend here that I can see the way forward with any clarity. In point of fact Bender et. al. also sense the importance of the mundane, for they write that: But note that here the mundane is only seemingly so, for the post-processual impulse is to hyperbolically accentuate the importance of what ever it is they are keen to portray as key to explaining the past. The mundane is important but only if it remains mundane. All the above, the walking, the tending, the speaking, the collecting are not important in and of themselves, but when sheaved into the weft and weave of ordinary life (i.e., seen in terms of their depth grammar), they will start to show how human life composes itself as an explicable entity. The first thing that certainly needs to be got underway is to render the extant archaeological record such that it can be smoothly surveyed at many different levels of spatial and temporal detail. Shanks and Tilley (1987) often complained about the redundancy of illustration and description within excavation reports, but redundancy and overlap is what supports cognition, for, ‘the richer and more tightly structured one’s representation...the easier it becomes to see...[deep structural] similarities...and the greater the possibility of identifying productive analogues’ (Richardson and Webster 1996a: 27). To engage in such mundane studies is not to be first to publication of a potted guide to recent trends in sociology (we can all browse the Journal of Mundane Behaviour for pertinent ideas). Rather, it is to do the hard work - for it will take hard work - in relevant ways by those in diverse but related disciplines that will let us see perspicuously the changing inner relations between the material world and human lives. This would not be something new found, for as human beings we already in fact know the mundane, but rather, it would be something better understood about the historically changing human condition. Reply to this paper, by Julian Thomas Acknowledgements I am pleased to acknowledge the helpful comments on earlier drafts by Peter Carne of Archaeological Services University Durham. Bibliography Bender, B., Hamilton, S., & Tilley, C. 1997. Leskernick: Stone Worlds; Alternative Narratives; Nested Landscapes. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 63: 147-178. Chapman, J. 1997. Places and Timemarks - the Social Construction of Prehistoric Landscapes in Eastern Hungary. In Semiotics of Landscape: Archaeology of Mind. (ed. G. Nash) BAR International Series No. 661, pp. 31-45. Chiel, H. J., & Beer, R. D. 1997. The brain has a body: adaptive behaviour emerges from interactions of the nervous system, body and environment. Trends in Neuroscience 20 (12): 553-557. David, B., & Wilson, M. 1999. 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